Tonight on the Tube: Lots of Good Stuff & a Few Not So Much

News & Notes

Tonight, ABC has series premiere of My Generation, the seventh season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy and the fourth season premiere of Private Practice, CBS has the fourth season premiere of The Big Bang Theory, the series premiere of $#*! My Dad Says, the 11th season premiere of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and the third season premiere of The Mentalist, FOX has the sixth season premiere of Bones and the third season premiere of Fringe, and NBC has the second season premiere of Community< .em>, the fifth season premiere of 30 Rock, the seventh season premiere of The Office and the series premiere of Outsourced.

Over on cable, Animal Planet has a The Trapper & the Amazon special, Food Network has the second season finale of Extreme Cuisine With Jeff Corwin and an America’s Best special, HGTV has the second season finale of My First Sale, and TLC has second season finale of BBQ Pit Masters.

Are you ready for another big night of premieres?

Prime Picks

The Vampire Diaries (The CW): New. Elena, Damon and Alaric are off to Duke to find Isobel’s research into all things paranormal and see if they can find out any information on the Lockwood family. Stefan is left to face a new danger in the woods.

Grey’s Anatomy (ABC): Season Premiere. Everyone is dealing with the aftermath of the shooting spree at the hospital. Derek decides to give up being the Chief and get back to doing surgeries. Run 61 minutes. I am so looking forward to this after last season’s spectacular season finale.

The Mentalist (CBS): Season Premiere. Jane is left questioning his future with the team after his encounter with Red John.

Solid Selections

Community (NBC): Season Premiere. The new semester is beginning and that gang is tackling Anthropology 101. Senor Chang has now enrolled in classes and wants to become part of the study group. I’ve heard that it’s a great episode. Looking forward to it.30 Rock (NBC): Season Premiere. Jack is messing with Liz’s new relationship with Carol, guest star Matt Damon. Tracy is handling Kenneth’s firing as a page very well.

Fringe (FOX): Season Premiere. Olivia attempts to find her way home from the alternate universe. Review: The season gets off to an excellent start with this episode that takes place almost entirely in the alt-verse. Anna Torv is doing great work playing dual versions of Olivia, sometimes at the same time. And, next week is outstanding too. Not sure how long they can keep up the alt-Olivia being in the normal-verse, but I am so on board to find out. It’s just plain fantastic TV.

Private Practice (ABC): Season Premiere. Pete and Violet are preparing to get married. Everyone comes together to mourn the loss of Dell. Starts a minute after the hour and runs 59 minutes.

Other Options

Ace of Cakes (Food Network): New. Duff heads out of town to bake a cake for a 175th Anniversary, but finds the bakery he is to use is tiny. A repeat episode follows. Both play again later.

The Big Bang Theory (CBS): Season Premiere. Sheldon goes on his first date and Penny tags along. Runs 30 minutes. The competition is stiff in the first hour of primetime. But, if really pushed right now, this would be my third option. Yet, it’s such a close race.

Bones (FOX): Season Premiere. Everyone returns to help save Cam’s job when she can definitively identify a set of remains that may be those of a recently missing girl. Review: If you like Bones like I do, then you’ll like this episode, as they have some fun with a few things. Wait until you see what Sweets has been up to since Daisy left with Dr. Brennan. I didn’t like the splitting everyone up at the end of last season, cause getting the gang back together ends up feeling just that much more contrived than a usual TV show plot does. Also, I didn’t really care for the ending, which is basically a wink-wink nudge-nudge joke about an aspect of the show many fans would like to see shipped already.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS): Season Premiere. Langston is fighting to survive after being attacked. The rest of the team is attending a funeral that could be a dangerous proposition.

My Generation (ABC): Series Premiere. A documentary crew followed some high school students around for their senior year and has returned 10 years later to do a follow up. The story you are watching goes back and forth between then and now. Review: I like the idea of portraying a drama using the faux-documentary style, as we’ve pretty much mostly seen it used in comedies on TV and in the movies. But, here that style is used very well to tell a story that isn’t all that interesting. It isn’t interesting because practically every part of the present day story is almost exactly what you would think it would be given what type of people they were in high school. Like for example, the overachiever is now a carefree surfing bar tender. Sadly, the style overshadows the substance, what little there is of it. Not one of the stories hooked me enough to want to watch another episode.

Nikita (The CW): New. Nikita helps save a journalist that is out to expose a conspiracy. Michael and Percy think they know who Nikita’s mole is.

The Office (NBC): Season Premiere. Michael won’t fire the new office assistant no matter how much the rest of the staff complains about his attitude. Pam attempts to impress Jim by pulling an office prank.

Outsourced (NBC): Series Premiere. A newly trained manager at a company that sells novelties finds out that his job has been relocated to India and he must move there too or begin looking for a new job. Review: This show makes me sad. Not because it’s so bad, but because outsourcing is such fertile and timely territory to mine for comedy. Yet, instead of any meaningful commentary on the state of things using humor, we get scatological and stereotype based jokes. It’s seriously hard to pick which is the worst new comedy, as there are so many to choose from. But, I’ve decided to go with this one as the worst, cause it had most potential that it so severely squandered.

$#*! My Dad Says (CBS): Series Premiere. A son that just lost his job goes to his father that has an opinion about everything for help and ends up moving in with him. Review: I see why this show was created following the popularity of the Twitter account and success of the book, but what I don’t see is how what ended up being created got picked up to series. While the “Pilot” that airs tonight is significantly better than the original version, which was terrible and the one that got it a series order, it’s still not very good. Secondly, I get the move of The Big Bang Theory to Thursday night, but I don’t see the audience that watches that sticking around to watch this. The pairing makes no sense to me. This will probably get a decent sized audience for the premiere, but I bet that audience skews much older than the show it follows.

Sports Note

ESPN has Thursday Night College Football action with Miami at Pittsburgh.